It's abot finding something interesting in an ordinary place...
I've found it has little to do with the things you see
and everything to do with the way you see them."
- Elliott Erwitt
Chapter 14
The House where Nick Lives
Max spread the Polaroid photographs around on the coffee table. Nick knelt on the opposite side. He'd stretched the lamp to it's full cord length from the wall and aimed its light down on the images they'd collected. The pictures depicted random items - things like the pointed tips of leaves, a feather on a rocky dirt path, an earthworm on the driveway.
This had been the surprise - the camera, that is, and the film that Max had used to capture the world as he saw it. Nick had followed him around the yard, then suggested going to his hose to take pictures, and the pair of them had driven the five blocks to the home that Nick shared with Raine. Max had snapped pictures of everything he thought meant something, including the number on the mailbox in front of Nick's house.
Max's box was in the kitchen, but Max hardly seemed to notice he'd crossed the entire house from it. He was enthralled with the photograhps. He clutched Nick's camera to his chest, staring down at them all, then held it up and took a picture of all the pictures, Nick's hand reaching across from the top left of the frame.
Nick laughed as that picture developed.
When the door opened at 7:00 and Raine came in, she was shaking her umbrella to dry it off, she kicked off her Doc Martin shoes and noticed there were two pairs of red Converse by the door. She peeked around the living room door frame and found Nick and Max laughing and wrestling on the couch, completely unaware she'd come in the room, polaroid photographs laying everywhere. One had landed on the floor at her feet and she picked it up and found it to be a close up of the two of their faces, cheeks pressed together, and out of focus. The gap in Nick's teeth was clearly visible in the photo. She looked up at the two boys, then tucked the picture into her bookbag.
Nick sat up suddenly and his eyes met Raine's. "Hey," he said, freezing.
Max's head poked up over the side of the sofa and his eyes got wide. He looked around. Where was his box? He felt a sort of panic take over him and tried to wrestle away from Nick to go find the box, but Nick still had a pretty solid grip on him and he couldn't slip away.
Raine smiled. She crossed the room and held out her hand to the wriggling boy. "You must be Max," she said.
Max stopped struggling at the sound of his name. How did this stranger know who he was? he wondered. He stared up at her smooth, warm face, her wide nose and kind, dark eyes. Max's eyes turned to look at her hand, and he hesitated, then carefully put his own little hand in hers. She wrapped her fingers around his hand and he noticed she had bright blue, sparkling fingernails.
Max liked the color blue. It seemed like it was the opposite of the color yellow.
"I'm Raine," she said to him, still smiling, as she released his hand. He drew his arm back from her and held his in his opposite hand, as though worried his hand had been injured by the shake. "Nick tells me a lot about you," she offered.
Max looked at Nick. Nick talked to people about him? Something inside Max felt a little ticklish and warm. He liked that Nick talked about him, though he wasn't quite sure what about it made him feel so strange inside.
Raine looked at Nick, "So how come you brought him here?" she asked. She discarded her bookbag onto the floor and stepped around the sofa, leaning over the coffee table and looking at the Polaroids.
"Just thought it'd be a nice treat," Nick answered, sitting up the rest of the way, shifting Max to the cushion beside him. "Plus we wanted to look at our pictures..." he waved a hand at all the photos strewn about everywhere. Raine smiled. "We took these all today. Well, Max did. I just watched."
Raine looked up, two photographs held in her fingertips that she'd been studying more closely. "Wow," she said to Max, "I'm impressed. These are all really pretty." She waved one, a close up of the center of a flower bearing a star shape in various shades of pink inside of it, and began shuffling through them. "You're a very good photographer, Max."
Max crawled off the sofa, now that Nick had released him, and sat on the carpet, hugging his knees to his chest. He picked up the camera from the table and aimed it at Raine, snapping a photo of her looking at the pictures. Raine smiled as it developed and Max tossed it onto the pile with the rest.
"Thank you," she said, picking it up.
Max put the camera back down and crawled out of the room, headed for the kitchen to retrieve his box. The moment he'd passed out of ear shot of a whisper, Raine looked at Nick. "What's going on?" she asked.
"One of the other boys was adopted today," Nick answered, scarcely above a breath, "And Max was really upset... Dinner table talk after someone gets a family at Mimi's is... well, they all want families, so they tend to talk about families and things like that. It can be really hard and confusing," he explained, "And I figured Max might rather not have it any harder than he needs to."
Raine nodded. "That was really thoughtful of you," she said quietly.
"You don't mind, right?" Nick asked, suddenly realizing he hadn't even asked her if it was okay if Max spend the night at their house.
Raine laughed, "Not at all."
A shuffling noise made them both look up. Max had re-entered the room, his box pulled over his head. He rolled the box onto its side and peeked through the flaps at them. Nick smiled. He picked up the camera and took a shot of the box, with Max's tiny fingers holding it closed.
